


They Hand You the World's Smallest Microphone

by Snow



Category: Newsflesh Trilogy - Mira Grant
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-16
Updated: 2011-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-22 16:19:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snow/pseuds/Snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: George Mason, protected sources.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Hand You the World's Smallest Microphone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sleepfighter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepfighter/gifts).



> Written as comment-fic and unbetaed. Also, I know next to nothing about journalism.

The easiest way to have a secure conversation isn't to have it in person. Unless you happen to already have a personal connection to the source -- in which case you they'll be better off talking to another journalist -- an in-person meeting draws rather a lot of attention, whether you live five minutes or five hours away from them.

There are secure connections that are as close to being actually secure as you can get, but unless you've got a really good technician hanging around, they're not something you can rely on. Buffy's the best I've ever met, but there are some ways you can get things close to secure without spending several month's worth of time and money on.

In my personal experience sometimes the best bet is to find some sort of innocuous, super-busy chatroom. Icanhascheeseburger works well, so do sex chats. It's best when it's somewhere both you and your sources spend some time on a regular basis, not least because that makes it easier for the contact to actually happen. Having a "secure" connection doesn't do any good if you have to communicate through email or personal websites to get them the information of how to meet you in virtual space.

The end result is that I spend a lot of time looking at pictures of people's cats doing stupid things or making cute faces. It hasn't melted my heart yet, though Shaun tells me that it'll happen any day now. The cat macros fall in an overlapping category as the Fictionalists, they're both forms of simple escapism. Concerned with the fact that the world's falling apart? Here, have a picture of cute cat or a story about overcoming social anxiety in a pre-zombie world.

Once I have the information from a source, I do whatever follow-up is necessary, write the post, and hope that we did a good enough job to cover the sources track. No one's allowed me to ask who it was; they tried three times to pass a law to overturn that and failed every time.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments (including constructive criticism) are welcome and appreciated.


End file.
